Canelo says Golovkin must fight him at 155lb catch-weight

By Boxing News - 10/22/2015 - Comments

Cotto-Canelo-LAPC-(Credit: Hogan Photos) By Dan Ambrose: If IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) wants to face Mexican star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) in 2016 or later, he’s going to need to agree to fight him at a catch-weight of 155 pounds, because that’s the weight that Canelo wants the fight to take place at.

Believe it or not, the 25-year-old Canelo feels that he’s not a true 160lb fighter yet, even though he rehydrates to as high as 175lbs for his fights at 155lbs. That’s 15 pounds over the 160lb middleweight limit. It’s very peculiar that Canelo doesn’t want to fight Golovkin at 160, because Canelo actually weighs more than Golovkin after he rehydrates.

It doesn’t make sense for Canelo not to face Golovkin at 160, because it has to hurt his performance having to drain down in weight 20 pounds to get to the 155lb catch-weights that he’s fighting at.

“If he [Golovkin] wants to fight with me, let him come down to 155 and I’ll fight him whatever day he wants,” Canelo said to Fighthype.com.

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If Canelo defeats WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto in their HBO pay-per-view fight on November 21st at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, then Canelo will need to vacate the WBC 160lb title he gets.

Canelo will not be able to force Golovkin, the WBC #1 mandatory challenger, to come down to 155 in order to get a title shot against him. Canelo can only force his opponents to fight him at that weight if it were a voluntary defense of the title, not a mandatory defense. If Canelo says ‘you have to fight me at a 155lb catch-weight or no fight,’ then Golovkin can basically laugh at him and tell him to get lost.

The World Boxing Council would then strip Canelo of his WBC title by not facing Golovkin at 160. However, I don’t think Canelo has any real intentions of holding onto the WBC middleweight title anyway if he beats Cotto. I see him vacating that belt the next day rather than face Golovkin or be put in the position where the WBC strips him of the belt after he tries to get Golovkin to dehydrate down to 155 in order to gain an edge against him.

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“At this moment, my body isn’t ready for 160 pounds. Maybe 1 or 2 more years I’ll be ready for 160,” Canelo said.

This is bad news for boxing fans because what Canelo is saying is that he’s not going to fight Golovkin if he gets past Miguel Cotto on 11/21. By saying Golovkin has to fight him at a catch-weight of 155lbs, Canelo is saying he doesn’t want the fight. If Golovkin says no to Canelo’s catch-weight of 155, then Canelo can say ‘See, he didn’t want to fight me. Oh well, I offered him the fight and he didn’t want to accept it.’

I don’t see how Canelo’s body isn’t ready for him to fight at 160. If he’s rehydrating to 175, then that tells me that he’s more than ready to be fighting at 160. If Canelo needs to put on more weight to get to 180 after he rehydrates so he can be exactly 20 pounds over the 160lb limit like he currently is 20 pounds over the 154lb limit, then he needs to eat a little more and do more weight training. He’ll be up 180 in no time.

Canelo has to feel that he would get an advantage over Golovkin if he agreed to drain down to 155 to take the fight, because otherwise Canelo would agree to fight him at 160. If Canelo is going to be out-weighing Golovkin anyway by coming into the fight at 175 to Golovkin’s 170, then I don’t see the point of him asking Golovkin to come down to 155. I guess if Golovkin comes down to 155, he might not be able to get back up to his normal weight of 170lbs after he rehydrates, and this would potentially give Canelo a 10 pound weight advantage over him rather than just the normal 5 pounds that he would enjoy if they both fought now.

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Golovkin is already on record for saying that he will not agree to fight Canelo or Cotto at 154. He says he would only do that for a fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr, but not against anyone else. But perhaps Golovkin will feel differently with the weight being 155 rather than 154. I doubt it. I see Golovkin saying no and then taking the WBC title off of Canelo after he’s either stripped of it by the WBC for failing to fight Golovkin at the natural weight of 160lbs for the division, or picking up the title when Canelo vacates it.

When Canelo says he might fight at 160 in 1 or 2 years, you have to see that as a thing where he could be trying to take advantage of the 33-year-old Golovkin by waiting him out until he’s 35 and older, and maybe beatable. Right now, Golovkin isn’t beatable and would likely make easy work of the red-haired Canelo. As good as Golovkin is, I don’t think he’s going to be old enough for Canelo to beat him in two years. Canelo might need to revise his 160lb estimate in the next two years by saying he can continue fighting at his own special weight of 155 for another two years without taking the plunge and finally facing guys at 160.

Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler was saying recently that he felt that Canelo was the more likely one to agree to face Golovkin than the 34-year-old, 5’7″ Cotto, but now it looks like there won’t be a Canelo vs. Golovkin fight. We don’t know what Cotto will say if he beats Canelo, but you can imagine that he might tell him that he needs to come down to 155 as well if he wants to fight him. I can actually see Cotto saying that Golovkin needs to come all the way down to 154 for the fight to happen, and I don’t see Golovkin agreeing to do that.

What it looks like to me is that Golovkin is turning into the Guillermo Rigondeaux of the middleweight division. The top fighters are facing each other, whereas Golovkin gets steered around by the top guys. At 122, you see guys like Carl Frampton and Scott Quigg facing each other, but not fighting Rigondeaux, who is recognized by many boxing fans to be the best fighter in the division by far.



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